Hi, I'm Pedro and today's episode is about creating chromatic harmony in your music. So this is a whole world in itself, and used with taste, it can take your music to all sorts of places, especially if you are the kind of composer that seeks to introduce novelty and surprise in the music that you make. But because it's such a big subject to cover, I'll just give you a taster for things you can start using and experimenting with right away.
We'll be looking at some ways to harmonize chromatic melody lines and also how you can create chromatic harmony using borrowed chords, secondary dominance, and voice leading. Ready Very briefly, chromatic harmony occurs when the used chords or melody in a given passage contain notes that do not belong to the tonality we are working with. And that's it. If you are working in the key of C major and if an F# sneaks in, you are now creating a passage with chromatic harmony or melody.
And as mentioned, we'll be looking at 2 scenarios that you're likely to find. The 1st is when you already have a chromatic line that you want to harmonize, and the other one is when you may or may not have a melody beforehand to be harmonized. So scenario one. In this next examples I included pedal notes placed at the top and the bottom, the F# and the B respectively, and of course a chromatic descending line from B to F in the middle register.
This is the material we are working with before we start the harmonization process. I explored 2 ideas to harmonize this setup. The first one was to use two chords that when played alternately, would cover that note from the descending chromatic line. In this case I chose the B minor 7 and the E 9 sharp 11. The last chord you hear is an E minor which could be the tonality I would be going for in the following section.
So to prepare the change, I tonicized it with AB altered chord, and the second option I explored with this setup was to simply double the descending chromatic line in major thirds. And since I'm doing parallel motion, I decided to experiment with adding an extra minor third above the descending line to
thicken the harmony. All in all, it's just harmonic planning using a major chord all the way down while using the same pedal note on the bass to keep the harmonic color grounded to that B. Now let's explore another way to create chromatic harmonies by mixing 2 key centers.
The idea is that when these two key centers are put together, they can include the chromatic descending line from B to F. In this case, I use D&E flat major keys, and I must say that I went over the top as when you put the notes of both scales together, including the common tones, of course you'll get the full chromatic scale. As for the harmonization process, I chose to have a chord every two beats to follow the
descending chromatic line. I picked chords either from the major or E flat major, but I did something else as well. Because we basically mash the 2 scales together, we now can create chord structures with notes from both keys while using their respective available chords as reference.
Let's say I have AD major chord. I can change it to AD minor by replacing the F# with the natural F from E flat major, or the same D major chord with an A flat, which would be like AD major with an added sharp 11. This way you can have chords that don't necessarily exist in either of the keys, but can be very handy for the harmonization process. This type of interaction is also interesting for polytunnel contexts, but I'll leave that to another time.
And with that said, let me show you what I did to harmonize the same descending chromatic line. I ditched the pedal notes and replaced it with a melody instead.
The only thing that I should add is that the G flat 9 chord before the E minor 9 is actually the result of harmonic planning from the E flat 9. The same chord basically moved a minor third up. It's just to say that this is not a chord that stems from the result of mixing the chords of two keys, although it could since I have the chromatic scale at my disposal. And of course, there are other tools that you could use to harmonize this type of musical
contexts. As I mentioned in the beginning of the video, this is a big subject and we are just touching the surface here. But very briefly, here are three other ways that are arguably more common to harmonize a chromatic line using descending 5th sequence with dominant chords, alternating between major and diminished chords, or with chromatic medians. All right, now let's proceed with the second scenario where we have a melody or not and create chromatic harmony in this setup.
That is, in the key of E minor, I created a melody already including some chromaticism, and then I harmonized it by choosing target chords for every two bars and thus leaving space to tonicize these chords on a second pass using secondary dominance and voice leading to introduce even more chromaticism in the key and generate more harmonic movement. And remember, even if you don't have a melody, you can follow
the exact same process. Now regarding the target chords themselves, I chose them taking in consideration the notes of the melody of course. But I must say that in this first harmonization pass, I used a couple of borrowed chords from East melodic minor and from D major to better accommodate the tone for the chromatic passages in the melody. So the first chord I chose was the E minor 9, which you can also look at it as being the 6th degree of the G major key.
The second one was C major 9, the 4th degree of the same key. And the next two other chords I picked were the C# hop diminished with the natural 9, the 6th degree of E minor melodic, and the B minor seven add 11, also the 6th degree, but from the key of D major. Here's what I have so far. Now that I have a general harmonic direction, I started to workout which other chords I could use in between the target
chords. As I mentioned, I primarily used voice leading to help me connect chords through chromatic movement and also secondary dominance and other dominance substitutions to guide the tonicization process. In case you don't remember, the trick to ensure good voice leading is to use common tones between chords as possible and try to reduce the chord voices movement to half or whole step.
So basically what you do is to play with this aspect and use these small gestures to add a bit of harmonic movement or create little chord melodies if you prefer to look at it that way, which will help you to prepare for and create smoother passages from 1 chord to the other.
So in between E minor 9 and C major nine, the first two target chords I use the G# half diminished to lead me to G7 at 13, a secondary dominant, which I then altered to AG9 flat 13 and resolved to the target chord C major 9. Again. Remember that voice leading justifies many of the chords that are being created
throughout this example. After the C major nine, I proceeded with the F7 sharp 11, which I momentarily altered to an F9 at 13 and back to create some harmonic movement right before using the B7 altered to target the C# half diminished the next target chord. Functionally, although it approaches its target chord from a step down, this is not a typical backdoor dominant which would normally resolve to a
major chord. So again, the usage of this chord is only justifiable due to the voice leading to the next chord. After this I chose the F# altered that succeeds chromatically from the C# half diminished and then its chord voices settle on AF sharp 7, sharp five with a neon bass, a secondary dominant that resolves to the target chord B minor 7. What happens next is the result of adding a chromatic melodic line above the chord structures.
Meanwhile, I kept the pedal point on B in the base, sustaining the harmonic tension as it approaches its resolution. So the harmonization process revolved around choosing as much as possible to have chord tones moving chromatically to the next chord tone and resolved to the target chord In a similar
manner. The produced chords after the B minor 7 and over the B pedal notes are the F# minor 6C7 and F# diminished 7. The target chord was the G major 9. And for effect, here is the full example, this time with the melody included. You could definitely develop this into another section as the G major 9 chord suggests, but my challenge to you is that you pick it up from here and maybe try it yourself using these ideas. The tools are here.
Now it's your turn to explore and make them your own. And what I really hope is that you come out inspired by this episode and go make new music. Incidentally, and since I used a similar approach there regarding target chords, the previous episode is what you want to hear next. It deals with using common chord progressions as target chords or guideposts if this approach sounded foreign to you during this episode. And now I would like to take a
moment to share some good news. Feedspot has made a list featuring the top 20 music theory and music composition podcasts, and I'm very proud to announce that the Beyond Music Theory podcast is in it. I would like to thank Feedspot for shedding a light on music theory blogs and podcasts and in helping to divulge the work of the many talented educators out there. And last but not least, my big heartfelt thank you for being part of my audience.
All right, so we reached the end of the episodes. And if you want to learn more about harmonizing melodies or creating chord progressions, check out the Beyond Music Theory ebook or the online courses Creating Unique Chord Progressions and Mastering the Art of Harmonizing Melodies. All the links will be in the description below. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe for more episodes like this. Thanks for watching and until next time.